Book Binding, Fiber Arts, and a little bit of life in the mix.

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Guess who has discovered Bullet Journals?! If you said Wonder Woman, you guessed wrong. For right now, I’m testing this out to see how I like it. If it sticks, I thinking of teaching a workshop on it for work.

My first venture into Bullet Journaling was just a single sheet activity/habit tracker:

After a few days, and taking a look at several bullet journal blogs, I made this little book last week just so see how I would like it:

So far, I can say that I’m finding it helpful to have all my little notes I make to myself in one place. If I think of something that I need to do or buy; I know exactly where to write it instead of just making a mental note or jotting down on a scrap piece of paper that I’ll just dump on my desk when I empty my pockets.

I have always wanted to own a Moleskine journal but, since I’m a bookbinder, I straight up can’t justify spending money on something I can make myself no matter how much I can hear them calling my name every time I pull into the bookstore parking lot.

I’m ready to make a second small journal to begin decorating for the month of February but I didn’t like the dot paper I printed for my last Bullet Book. I decided to create my own printable paper with much lighter lines and a grid instead of dots. The dots were my first choice but I found that I just kept writing things where I kept drawing boxes. I also wanted more lines per page than the previous paper. I thought there may be others that would find this printable grid paper useful so I’m sharing my file here. It is two pages of 8.5 x 11 so you can easily print double sided if you have access to a printer with the double sided function.

A copy of Bound: Over 20 Artful Handmade Books by Erica Ekrem arrived at my library yesterday. As you can imagine, being a bookbinder, I’m always excited to see a new Bookbinding book on the shelves. I immediately popped open the book and began to flip through the projects. I was stopped dead in my tracks, mouth agape, on pages 40/41 when I saw the Preserve-A-Memory-Mason-Jar Book.

The picture peering back at me from page 40 of Bound is of a Mason Jar filled with a book. The only difference between this and my Book Jar is the size of the jar and the little square of fabric.

I am amazed that these since these two projects are published by the same publishing company that nobody bothered to check to see if someone had created something like this before.

I am not at all happy about this situation.

Not. Happy. At. All.

My Book Jar was made as a way of healing from the death of my grandfather. The book pages were selected around themes associated with him. The meditative state of tearing down paper into pages and stitching them together with threads from my grandmother’s sewing kit was key in the healing process the year after his death. The entire idea was inspired by one of my grandfather’s favorite quotes that he would say to me each day when I came to visit after school. The inspiration for my Book Jar was detailed in my submission paperwork for Eco Books when the project was originally submitted in 2008.

As you can see, my Book Jar is very clearly a Memory Jar like the title on page 40 of Bound claims for the title of Erica Ekrem’s piece.

I am not sure what can be done about this situation. I am not at all pleased with your company’s negligence in checking through your own past published books to see if any of the projects in Bound could be compared to work from other artists. I wonder if other artists published in your books have noticed their own work and ideas recreated or claimed as original by another artist(s) in this or other books that you have published.